Can Robot Planes Save the Air Force?

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Can Robot Planes Save the Air Force?

If it's bloody dogfights versus the Red Chinese over the Taiwan Strait that represent our Air Force's future, then we're probably right to invest so heavily in speedy, stealthy, expensive manned fighters – even if the budgetary picture for these airplanes looks worse by the day.

While the manned fleet teeters on the edge of failure, the Air Force's flying robots are coming into their own. After suffering 20-percent crash rates during its first few years of service, the $10-millionPredator is now roughly as safe as reliable as a manned fighter, and has added bigger engines and Hellfire missiles to its basic airframe.The $20-million Reaper began flying attack missions last fall and scored its first kill in Afghanistan in October. British officers heaped the highest praise on the new drone when they called it a "miniA-10," referring to the classic close air support jet built in the1970s and now struggling with its own age issues.*

Reaper is designed to carry up to 5,000 pounds of ordnance, includingHellfires and laser-guided bombs – and, starting later this year, satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions, too, according to 432ndWing commander Col. Chris Chambliss. Reaper's combination of day and night cameras and ground-mapping radar means it can spot targets and fire weapons even through cloud cover. While it cruises at around half the speed of the Air Force's mainstay F-16 fighter, the Reaper can loiter for up to 12 hours, much longer without refueling than fighter jets that aren't designed for powered-down orbiting.

This ability to hang around, waiting for targets, makes the long-wingedReaper ideally suited for taking cues from ground troops and hitting elusive insurgents on short notice. At a 2004 conference, Maj. Gen.Marc Rogers, then Air Force Materiel Command director of transformation, called this "kill chain" "the most fundamental process in the battle space." Shortening the chain has long been an Air Force priority. But for this purpose, the physics of fast, low-endurance manned jets are perhaps inferior to UAVs' long loiter time. As long as pop-up targets are the Air Force's main worry, more drones just might be the answer to its needs. ...*Despite this, armed UAVs still get short-changed in Air Force spending plans. The service's Fiscal Year 2009 budget, released in January, includes $13 billion for around 100 airplanes. More than 50 arePredators and Reapers, but those airframes cost only $700 million combined, including funds for research.*